Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[TheRod]

And still in same, these were my collected thoughts regarding Yoshida's words and overall for the then upcoming expansion:

Personally, I suspect lots will end up disappointed with the history, much to the same reasons of the long threads we had complaining about Shadowbringers, be them here, Reddit, Gamefaqs or elsewhere (quick google and will find posts about people complaining we used even more light, there was no "blessing of darkness", plus, due that, the "Warrior of Darkness" title was a clever metaphorical one only, our character wasn't put into a position truly at odds with light and having to abandon it, but rather just worked as "regulator" of sorts or even helped again by it via the Oracle of Light).

If not mistaken, some even threatened to sue Square for "false advertising", lol - and this is real, can look for it in this very same forums.

In the end, the writing is pretty idealistic. Our character will always be the goody two shoes, who will be smiling and saving cats in trees: we will always be the Superman, Steve Rogers, Aragorn (whose may not be the coolest, but need to be there for the final strike, for the "good", "heroic" message) and never the Batman, Big Boss or a Geralt (operating more on the gray area if convenient) - I really doubt, after all these years, and in the final chapter of this season, that it'll change.

Especially, since it ends in the expansion itself.

I expect even more on the typical idealism again. This imagery of the Paladin - bar all the Cecil parallels - displays exactly the imagery of the noble good knight clad in shiny armor to save the day - our typical heroic fairytale.

And now in hindsight and having indeed finished the tale, it's crazy because that's exactly what I would post now, in the end, again. Over another conditions I'd totally forget about something I casually wrote months ago, but in this case was reminded immediatelly after finishing. It was truly what they said we were getting.

Personally,it was a 10 out of 10 patch for me - but from the beginning was already expecting this story. Like also said, can completely understand why it's not gonna be cool cake for everyone.

[Necrotica]

Very random but Hades making the comment about finding out the real identities of the 12 made no sense so me. That would be like saying you can find out the real identities of the greek or egyptian gods. None of the gods are real. Just stories and myth given form via aether and faith. Find out the eorzean historical figures some of them may be based on maybe?

Course if the writers want to do the whole 'these gods are actually totally real gods and different' thing I just...meh.

This expansion has been a lot of 'these rules/lore facts we introduced previously are now different'. Not fun.

[iheartlove42]

Very random but Hades making the comment about finding out the real identities of the 12 made no sense so me. That would be like saying you can find out the real identities of the greek or egyptian gods. None of the gods are real. Just stories and myth given form via aether and faith. Find out the eorzean historical figures some of them may be based on maybe?

Course if the writers want to do the whole 'these gods are actually totally real gods and different' thing I just...meh.

This expansion has been a lot of 'these rules/lore facts we introduced previously are now different'. Not fun.

The Twelve being real beings has been a thing since 1.0, and Louisioux invoked their power to stop Bahamut. Gauis calls them eikons/primals in ARR because he's being a dramatic villain trying to get under your skin, not because it's the truth.

[QT_Melon]

A little funny remark my friend made going through the 85-87 quest line

Why did we need to be careful about losing Emet in a follow quest when he can summon his own mount?

[EmoPanther]

What I wanna know is how the hell Elidibus knew when to send us. He says something along the lines of "You were there, I remember you." But you don't see Elidibus anywhere, and noone remembers anything except Venat. I've heard acouple people say the person in the Epilogue in Elpis is him, but he says something like "I'll wait until my companion returns, just as she told me" or some crap like that. But again, only person who even knew we went to Elpis 'once' is Venat, and she wouldn't have any idea whether or not we went again.

Idk, there's other little stuff i don't get. like they said Hydalyn was made from a sacrifice of the remaining people of Amaurot, but it looks like Venat did it all on her own in the cutscene. confusing.

[KageTokage]

What I wanna know is how the hell Elidibus knew when to send us. He says something along the lines of "You were there, I remember you." But you don't see Elidibus anywhere, and noone remembers anything except Venat. I've heard acouple people say the person in the Epilogue in Elpis is him, but he says something like "I'll wait until my companion returns, just as she told me" or some crap like that. But again, only person who even knew we went to Elpis 'once' is Venat, and she wouldn't have any idea whether or not we went again.

Idk, there's other little stuff i don't get. like they said Hydalyn was made from a sacrifice of the remaining people of Amaurot, but it looks like Venat did it all on her own in the cutscene. confusing.

safety spoilers

They showed that Venat is extremely sensitive to her own magicks, given she was able to track Meteion to the edge of the universe with them so her noticing whether or not we traveled to Elpis doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

The specifics of Elidibus knowing about us are almost certainly going to be explored in the Pandemonium raid, though I'm mostly confused about how they're going to lead into it with the implication that it's happening in the past.

That cutscene was meant to be more symbolic then anything else, since we already know Hydaelyn was summoned after the Final Days ceased, not while they were still happening.

[Kaliesto]

I don't understand the situation with the Satrap in Thavnair Act 2

As strong and fast as the Warrior of Light is why the world did he let that happen to the Satrap?

That seems like a major oversight.

[KageTokage]

I mean...it's not like there hasn't been several other times where something bad happened because we were having a deer in the headlights moment.

Sometimes forced incompetence is necessary for the sake of narrative drama; especially with a protagonist as powerful as our character.

[Lyth]

Very random but Hades making the comment about finding out the real identities of the 12 made no sense so me. That would be like saying you can find out the real identities of the greek or egyptian gods. None of the gods are real. Just stories and myth given form via aether and faith. Find out the eorzean historical figures some of them may be based on maybe?

Urianger previously made a few remarks in Shadowbringers about how how the various sun deities including Azyema, the Warden, and Azim, the Dawn Father both trace their common origins to a certain similarly-named individual, which also happens to match up symbolically with a certain soul crystal. The real question is who the other 11 are, and whether they match up with said individual's colleagues or predecessors.

While we're at it, there's another set of 12 names tied to Ivalice lore that reference different members of the same group of individuals. It's not really all that surprising that different cultures have a shared subconscious memory of them pre-sundering.

[Alleo]

So now that I was able to sleep over it (and without the stress of the long queues and fear to be thrown out of the game) I will give my impressions about the expansion.

First I do think that it was a very good end for the first story arc. I had moments where I was in tears, where I laughed or felt sad. Still for me it never reached Shadowbringers. These escort and stealth missions got on my nerves the more we got. Some of them made sense but for others it felt like padding. The same with these quests where you have to go to specific points and wait and look around.

Well now into spoiler territory

I loved that till the very end Hydealyn was a goddess with faults but still good at heart. That SE did not turn around and made us fight her to destroy her but as a test.

I am also fine with what they have done to Zodiark. After all he had always just be a tool for the Ascians. As we learned he was controlled by all the sacrificed souls that saw themselves as the will of the star (which was probably an honor for them seeing how they lived to make the planet better) and I wonder if they could even be exchanged...what would have happened to Zodiark and his mission if suddenly the new souls might not want to be the will of the star and be full of anger and hatred for the Ancients? Still happy that these souls got released and will be able to be reborn.

I am not really sure if I like Endsinger. I enjoyed the Hydealyn dungeon and was looking forward to the last one, the one with all the creepy images in the trailer. But before that we had to go through a copy of different "worlds" and of course all had the same theme of despair and finding no sense in existence. Honestly by the end of that zone I was already over that...and I just cant believe that most if not all worlds ended in such a way. And even if they did (one day every star will die after all) it would not mean that every person on that planet yearned for oblivion.

With the amount of stars in this universe and the relative small amount of the birds (bad remembering names...) I just cant believe that they saw it all...and as we learned through the notes in the dungeon, the birds may have played a huge part in starting their ends and death wishes...which for me means that somehow these birds are able to be such a huge influence...

It was too much of the despair, too much of the talk about ending it all that instead of feeling bad, it made me feel a bit annoyed. Like "I get it SE" everything will end bad, our world too, even if you have a happy world where nobody dies, they yearn for death...I am not sure what was so bad about it? I mean they can live a long life that may at some point lose its meaning and then get the choice to die. Thats not that bad imo. Even the Ancients in a way lived like that. If they felt they have done enough for the planet they choose to die. Bascially they were "immortal" but still had their meanings in life. And some like Venat even continued to live even when their duty was done.

All of that has really tampered the finale for me quite a bit, especially when it was forced to end with fight with Zenos...I liked the part where we could not even stand anymore and how we seemingly got some grave wounds but I wished that was from fighting the Endsinger and not that spoiled prince...

Not that I of course disliked the whole end part. There were great moments in between that were awesome. All the speeches from the Scions but especially Grahas (with that fistpump) and the twins. The last two being much more concerned with leaving us behind. The slow walk afterwards with the prayers of people probably pushing us further, fearing again that we have lost another round of good friends.

The beautiful scenerey with the flowers and of course the last actions of Azems old friends.

Later then our character finally not accepting that their friends die and doing something! I grinned so widely when she got the teleport device out and saved them, knowing that she will have to stand alone but doing so with the knowledge that those she loved will be save. The last part of the fight against the Endsinger...where the scions prayer help us to defeat them.

Really there were many of such great scenes in this expansion (and I still cheered even when we had the "everyone comes together" in Shadowbringer already...but it was so nice to see how our actions really brought it all together) and if they only had that, it would have blown Shadowbringers away.

But sadly they also had way more low moments, even in the final act of the story, that it took me out too much. Especially since all of that hinged on Venat somehow being able to plan all of that. How it all ended that well even though we just changed our future in the expansion before that...was that too already one of her plans? Venat was a bright and awesome person (I liked her very much) and yes the Ancients were much more powerful than us. But it still felt that she was a bit too good in that part. That she somehow was able to put the plan in motion that for example the Space Ship was ready just in time for the Final days. And yet even with all her knowledge and seemingly power she did not try to changer her own future at all. I wonder if she might have explained it to our Azem who was not happy to just play it out and who tried to change it but failed...

So as a conclusion I am fine with the ending. Yet if I could have written it, I would not have put the stakes so high. I wished they kept it to just our planet, even if it would have truly just been an alien lifeform that sleeps deep in the planets core or something. I mean in the end the Final Days were a product of the Ancients themselves. Hermes did create the birds and sent them out to bring him an answer about life. And with that action he might have doomed who knows how many worlds because as far as I understood it was his creation that later turned into Endsinger because of all that despair. Having him create the "Final day boss" but keeping it soley on this planet would have felt better for me. His view on the way the Ancients threat other living lifeforms was compelling enough, it really did not need to be on such a wide scale.